More than a half-million orange-clad hunters will take to Penn’s Woods Saturday, Nov. 30, for the start of the firearms deer hunting season. The opener is likened to that in popularity to the trout fishing kickoff in spring.

The season this year includes Sunday, Dec. 1 and continues from Dec. 2-14 for antlered and antlerless deer.

Last season, hunters harvested an estimated 430,010 whitetails with the buck harvest estimated at 171,600 and the antlerless estimated at 258,410. Even with that, there are a lot of deer in Pennsylvania as they continue to thrive taking residence in many populated, non-hunting areas.

Some may wonder how the PGC comes up with yearly harvest figures. According to the PGC, last year 31 teams of trained deer agers visited deer processors to collect data, age deer based on tooth replacement and wear, and examined more than 24,000 whitetails. This information plus online reporting system, deer harvest report cards and reporting by phone are used to determine an approximate harvest.

Looking at the 2023-24 buck harvest, it was up by 5 percent over the previous season and up 6 percent over the three-year average. It’s interesting to note that the PGC says that overall, 27 percent of deer hunters harvested a buck. That was a slight increase over 2022-23’s 26 percent rate, and up from 15 percent success rate seen as recently as 2007-08 season.

The agency points out that the majority of bucks harvested are older than in past decades. Before antler point restrictions, most bucks harvested were yearling deer, meaning those 1.5-years old. In 2023-24, 64 percent of bucks taken were at least 2.4 years old. If sportsmen recall, Gary Alt, the former bear biologist turned deer manager, instituted the point restriction to a lot of backlash from sportsmen who now, in retrospect, should realize his new restrictions produced bigger deer with larger racks. The bucks in reality, got a chance to mature.

As for the 2023-24 antlerless deer harvest, 69 percent of the harvest was adult females and another 16 percent were button bucks with 14 percent being doe fawns. Equally as interesting, was that one in four antlerless licenses issued last season, resulted in a harvest. Understandably, the regular firearms season accounted for the largest part of the 2023-24 deer harvest.

The following are total firearms season deer harvest figures for the most popular Wildlife Management Units that Lehigh Valley sportsmen typically hunt in, with 2022-23 figures in parentheses and “A” representing antlered and “AL” antlerless deer.

WMU 2G: 81,00-A (8,800), and 6,500-AL and 6,500 (5,100)

WMU 3A: 5,200-A (5,700), and 6,000-AL (5,600)

WMU 3B: 7,700-A, and (7,300-AL), and 7,600-AL (8,900)

WMU 3C: 8,900-A (8,000-AL), and 10,600-AL (12,000)

WMU 3D: 6,200-A (5,500), and 7,300-AL (7,400)

WMU 4C: 8,200-A (6,900), and 6,700-AL (8,200)

WMU 5C: 9,100-A (7,200), and 13,100-AL (16,700)

WMU 5D: 2,900-A (2,500), and 6,700-AL (6,700)

With the snow we received last Friday, those hunting the norther tier of the state where there was appreciable snow amounts, should have some good conditions for spotting and tracking deer if need be.